Torrance Personal Injury Attorneys
Burg & Brock represents people hurt in Torrance by someone else’s carelessness — on the road, in a shop or restaurant, in a rented home, at work on someone else’s property, or by a dog. The work is establishing how it happened, identifying who is legally responsible, securing the evidence before it disappears, and documenting what the injury has actually cost.
Not every injury claim starts from a hospital bed, and not every one starts with a collision. If you are unsure whether what happened to you counts, that is an ordinary reason to ask rather than a reason to wait.
Torrance · South Bay · Los Angeles County
Being injured is not by itself a claim. In most cases four things have to line up: someone owed you a legal responsibility, they fell short of it, that failure caused your injury, and the injury produced losses the law recognizes.
Who owed you that responsibility depends entirely on the facts, and it is not always the obvious person. It may be a driver, a shop or restaurant, a landlord, a property manager, a short-term rental host, a contractor working on a site, a product manufacturer, or a public entity. Sometimes several at once.
The standards are also not identical across claim types. What has to be shown about a supermarket floor is not what has to be shown about a rear-end collision, and a dog bite in California follows different rules again. That is one of the reasons a first conversation is useful even when you are not sure you have a case.
You do not need to have worked any of this out before you call, and you do not need paperwork in hand to start.
What generally has to be shown
A legal responsibility
That the other party owed you a duty to act with reasonable care in the circumstances.
A failure to meet it
Something done, or left undone, that fell short of that duty.
Causation
That the failure produced the injury, rather than something unrelated to it.
Losses the law recognizes
Treatment, income, care still ahead, or the effect on what you are able to do.
These elements are not identical in every type of claim, and how each one is proved depends on the facts. Nothing here is legal advice about your situation.
Road collisions are only part of it. A large share of serious injury claims begin on someone else’s property, and the most severe ones are handled differently from the start because the biggest part of the claim is care that has not happened yet. Each of these has a page explaining how that type of claim works.
TorranceSouth Bay, Los Angeles County
Getting the collision report, accurately. Torrance publishes its own process, and it is more specific than most people expect.
Torrance is its own incorporated city in the South Bay, not a district of Los Angeles, and that has a practical consequence: it has its own police department. An incident inside the city limits is generally handled by the Torrance Police Department rather than by the LAPD or the Sheriff.
The exception is the state highway system. Where the California Highway Patrol investigates a crash, the report is the CHP’s and comes through the CHP’s own separate request process, not the city’s portal. Two incidents a short distance apart can therefore end up with two different agencies, and asking the wrong one is a common way to lose several weeks at the start of a claim. If you are not sure which agency attended, that is something we can establish.
Much of the injury work here has no police report at all, because a great deal of it does not happen on a road. A fall in a shop, a hazard in a rented home or a short-term rental, an injury in a parking structure or a stairwell — in those cases the useful material is whatever the business or the property owner recorded. An internal incident report is helpful if you have one, but it is not a prerequisite to speaking with a lawyer, and not having one is normal.
Evidence has a shelf life.
That is the reason to ask early.
You do not need any of this to call. Bring whatever you already have. Obtaining the rest is part of the work, and it is not something you are expected to assemble on your own while injured.
Camera systems overwrite. Maintenance logs get archived. A damaged vehicle is repaired or sold. None of that stops a claim being built later — it means there is less left to find.
What is worth asking for, and who holds it
The official report, if one exists
Torrance Police Department for incidents in the city, the California Highway Patrol for what it investigates.
The property’s own records
Incident reports, maintenance and cleaning logs, repair requests and earlier complaints about the same hazard. Held privately, and not guaranteed to be released without a formal request.
Any available footage
Business, building or doorbell cameras. Whether any of it covers the spot is not something anyone can promise in advance, and retention is often days rather than months.
What you already hold
Photographs, messages, witness names, the first medical notes, and records of what the injury has cost you financially.
Nothing here guarantees that a particular record exists or that it will be produced.
Where and how something happened decides what can still be recovered afterwards, and it also decides who the claim is against. Those two questions are usually answered by the same material.
Depending on the facts, responsibility may rest with a driver, a vehicle’s owner, a business or its employer, a property owner, a tenant or operator who actually controlled the premises, a management company, a contractor whose work created a hazard, a manufacturer, or a public entity. More than one can be responsible at the same time, and none of them is responsible automatically — appearing on a list like this is not a finding of liability in any particular case.
In a premises claim the decisive document is frequently unglamorous: a cleaning log, a work order, or a record of somebody reporting the same problem weeks earlier. Whether that material exists is a question of fact, and whether it is produced can depend on a formal request.
Depending on the facts, any of these may be responsible, and sometimes several at once. Appearing on this list does not make a party liable in a given case.
A driver
Where their driving caused or contributed to what happened.
A business or operator
Where a shop, restaurant or venue controlled the area where you were hurt.
A property owner
Where the condition of the property played a part in the injury.
A landlord or host
Including rented homes and short-term rentals, where responsibility for upkeep sits with the owner.
A property manager
Where day-to-day control and maintenance sat with a management company.
An employer
Where a vehicle or a worker was engaged in the work of the business.
A contractor
Where work on the site created or left the hazard.
A manufacturer
Where a defect in a product is supported by evidence.
A public entity
Where a road or property condition is legally attributable to one. Shorter deadlines apply.
Medical expenses
Future medical care
Lost earnings
Reduced earning capacity
Pain and suffering
Property damage
Other supported losses
Each of these is proved a different way.
What can be claimed depends on the facts and on the law that applies. These are the categories that usually come up. They are not a menu, and they are not a prediction about any particular case.
Some are proved with paperwork: bills, pay records, tax returns. Others are not reducible to a receipt. Where an injury is severe enough to change what someone can do permanently, the two largest figures are usually the care still ahead and the earnings that will now never happen — and neither of those exists as a document yet. Both have to be built from medical and economic evidence, and those are different disciplines rather than one expert covering both.
California also has rules about how medical expenses are measured that can make the amount claimed differ from the amount a provider originally billed. That is a question for your own case rather than something a page can answer.
A wrongful death claim is measured differently from an injured person’s own claim, and the people entitled to bring one are defined by statute. If a death is involved, that is a conversation to have directly rather than from a page.
No responsible case value can be worked out from a location or a diagnosis alone.
What can honestly be said, and when.
It depends on who is responsible and whether that is disputed, on any share of fault attributed to you, on the severity of the injury, on treatment already had and care still ahead, on income lost, on any effect on earning capacity, on the insurance and assets actually available to pay, and on how well the evidence holds up when it is tested.
That last one carries more weight in premises claims than people expect. A claim against a business can turn on whether anyone had reported the same hazard before, and the answer to that is either in the records or it is not.
Anyone who gives you a figure before those questions are answered is guessing, and a guess is worth nothing to you. What a firm can tell you early is which of them look straightforward and which look contested. Timing matters as well: a claim is difficult to value while treatment is still changing, which is a reason claims are not usually presented the week after an injury.
General guidance, not medical advice and not a checklist you have to complete before contacting anyone.
On speaking to insurers. Your own policy may require you to cooperate with your own insurer, and that obligation is not the same as any request from the other side’s insurer. They are different relationships with different duties. Before giving a recorded statement to anyone, it is reasonable to ask what it is for and to take advice first.
A general approach rather than a fixed promise. What a particular case needs depends on its facts.
Free consultation
What happened, what injuries resulted, and what has already been said to an insurer.
Investigation
Reports, property records, any available footage, witnesses and medical notes, sought while they still exist.
Identifying who is responsible
Often more than one party, and sometimes not the one that seemed obvious at the scene.
Documenting the losses
Treatment had, care still ahead, income affected, and what cannot be measured in receipts.
Negotiation
Presenting the claim to the insurers involved and answering what they dispute.
Litigation where appropriate
Filing suit where a claim cannot be resolved on acceptable terms. Whether a case resolves or is tried depends on its facts, and time-sensitive steps are not deferred merely because treatment is continuing.
2 years*
California Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1 sets two years for an action for injury to, or the death of, an individual caused by the wrongful act or neglect of another. The California Courts self-help guidance states the same two-year period for personal injury.
The asterisk matters. Two years is not the only clock that can run, and which rule applies is a question about your own facts rather than something to assume from a page.
Where a public entity may be responsible, the timing is much shorter. A claim generally has to be presented to the agency within six months of the injury under Government Code section 911.2. The agency then has 45 days to respond, and if it rejects the claim you generally have six months from the date the rejection was mailed to file suit. That is a sequence of deadlines rather than a single one, and it runs before any lawsuit exists.
Other situations can follow different timing again, including injuries to minors, injuries not discovered until later, and medical malpractice. There is no informal grace period and no practical cutoff that replaces the legal one — a claim is either within the applicable deadline or it is not, which is precisely why it is worth asking early rather than estimating.
If you were partly at fault. California reduces a recovery by your share of responsibility rather than ending the claim outright. How that share is decided depends on the evidence, and an insurer’s early view of it is not the final word. Being blamed at the scene does not settle the question.
On where a case would be heard: the Los Angeles Superior Court has been phasing out its Personal Injury hub at the Spring Street Courthouse, and since 10 October 2022 newly filed unlimited civil personal injury cases have been assigned within their respective districts instead. Which court would handle a particular matter depends on the case, so it is a question to ask about your own claim rather than something this page will promise.
Worth asking before you sign anything. Any firm, not just this one.
The firm handles injury claims on a contingency fee. In plain terms, the attorney’s fee is a share of a recovery rather than an hourly bill, and if there is no recovery there is no attorney’s fee.
Fees and case costs are two different things, and it is worth being clear about that before you sign anything. Costs are the expenses of running a case — obtaining records, filing fees, expert work. Ask how costs are handled if a case does not resolve, and ask for the answer in writing.
Burg & Brock does not maintain an office in Torrance. Clients here are served from the firm’s other California offices, and an initial conversation does not require you to travel. If you need arrangements other than a phone call, ask when you get in touch rather than assuming from a website.
Meet the lawyer
Cameron Yadidi Brock is the founding attorney of the Law Offices of Burg & Brock, A Professional Law Corporation, and is responsible for the content of this page. He was admitted to the California Bar in June 1996 and his license is active.
His practice is injury work: motor vehicle collisions, premises injuries, catastrophic injury and wrongful death. Every California attorney has a public license record showing status, admission date and any discipline. You do not have to take a website’s word for it — on this firm or on any other.
Which attorney or staff member works on a particular matter depends on the case and on who is available. Ask who your point of contact will be when you speak to the firm rather than relying on a page to tell you.
Generally it comes down to whether someone else’s failure to take reasonable care caused an injury that cost you something. The standards differ between claim types, so you do not have to work it out yourself. Describing what happened is usually enough for a first conversation.
Torrance is its own city with its own police department, so incidents within the city limits are generally handled by the Torrance Police Department. Where the California Highway Patrol investigates, the report is the CHP’s and comes through its own separate process. Torrance releases most collision reports through a LexisNexis portal and asks you to allow at least 15 days; hit-and-run and fatal collisions may be delayed. If you are unsure which agency attended, we can find out.
It depends on who controlled the thing that caused the injury, which is not always the owner. A business, a landlord, a short-term rental host, a management company or a maintenance contractor can each be responsible for different parts of a property. Working out which applies usually comes from the maintenance records, work orders and any earlier complaints about the same hazard.
That is common, and it does not stop a claim. Most injuries on private property produce no police report because no police attended, and a business will not always give you its internal report. Obtaining whatever record does exist is part of the work rather than something you have to do first.
Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1 sets two years for an injury action, but it is not the only clock. Where a public entity may be responsible, a claim generally has to be presented within six months under Government Code section 911.2, the agency has 45 days to respond, and a rejection generally starts a further six-month period to sue. Injuries to minors, injuries discovered later and medical malpractice can follow different timing again.
California reduces a recovery by your share of responsibility rather than ending the claim. How that share is decided depends on the evidence, and an insurer’s early view of it is not the final word. Being blamed at the scene does not settle it.
Injury claims are handled on a contingency fee, so the attorney’s fee comes out of a recovery rather than up front, and there is no attorney’s fee without one. Case costs are separate from fees — ask how those are treated, and ask for it in writing, before you sign anything.
Whatever you already have: a report number, letters from an insurer, photographs, and where you were treated. If you have none of it the conversation is still worth having. The firm does not have an office in Torrance, and a first conversation can happen by phone; if you need a different arrangement, ask when you get in touch.
Mostly the medical picture, because a claim is hard to value while treatment is still changing — which is especially true of head and spinal injuries. Disputed responsibility and multiple insurers add time as well. Nobody can honestly give you a date at the outset.
Tell us what happened and we can tell you whether there is a claim worth pursuing, what it would involve and what the next step is. There is no charge for the conversation and no obligation after it.
Submitting a form or calling does not create an attorney-client relationship. Please do not send confidential information until a relationship has been established in writing.
What happens when you get in touch
Prefer to speak to someone now? Call (888) 528-8595. You do not need a report, photographs or paperwork to have the first conversation.
Choose which categories of cookies and tracking technologies you allow on burgbrock.com. Strictly necessary cookies are always on so the site can function.
Required for the site to load, keep you signed in, and remember your preference choice. Always active.
Lets us see which pages people visit so we can improve the site. No personal data is sold.
Allows ad partners to measure the performance of ads you may have seen and show more relevant ads.
Powers extras like chat, embedded video, and remembered form fields. Turning these off may break some features.
